Pegg signs on for ‘Search for Happiness’

Chelsom directs dramedy

Simon Pegg is set to star in Peter Chelsom’s dramedy “Hector and the Search for Happiness.”

Pic, shopped by Lisa Wilson and Myles Nestel’s The Solution Entertainment Group, sees Pegg play an eccentric London psychiatrist whose patients aren’t getting any happier, so he embarks on a quest to find out if happiness exists in the world.

Chelsom (“Shall We Dance?,” “Funny Bones”) helms from a script he co-penned with Tinker Lindsay based on the bestseller of the same name by Francois Lelord.

The German-Canadian co-production is produced by Egoli Tossell Film and Screen Siren Pictures.

“I’ve been searching long and hard for a film that would bring me back to my European sensibilities,” said U.K.-born Chelsom. “?’Hector’ is a contemporary love story, a fable wrapped around a very human hero’s journey.”

The Solution is handling worldwide rights to the pic, and is shopping it in Cannes along with “Writers,” starring Greg Kinnear and Jennifer Connelly; “Grand Piano,” produced by Adrian Guerra and Rodrigo Cortes; Joel Edgerton starrer “Felony” and espionage actioner “November Man.”